They charged us 4.5% rake on NLHE and 4.25% on PLO games (€0.05/€0.10 stakes) during the beta testing session. Its a possibility they may charge us different rake structure once the site officially launches coz they clearly stated that the rake structure was only for beta-testing.

You can find more details here:

Run It Once Poker: Everything You Need to Know

Thanks.

Yes, they raked 4.5% on flop and turn from action
I mean it pretty lucky to get spot where hand went to river and there was bet on river and showdown within 2 minutes video but it seem rake was not paid on river action based on numbers mentioned in previous posts.
During beta play time anyone noticed something similar during big pots or this is just bad math/something totaly random just during beta and/or in this video?

Ha! I'm glad someone is optimistic that the site will be going live during the first quarter of the 21st century.

I hate to say it because I have high hopes for RIO but Run It Once is a terrible name for a poker room. The average poker noob has absolutely no idea what it means and to them has no relevance to poker whatsoever.

The acronym RIO is a plus tho.

That's true

That remains to be seen. I imagine the poker room that has hosted the world series for main years - the Rio Poker Room - may have a different view once ROIPoker becomes big.

You can make same argument and say "Full Tilt" is a terrible name for a poker room, but "Full Tilt Poker" became the best poker brand at the time by providing the best experience, which is what "Run It Once Poker" is aspiring to do and I don't see how the name would have any effect. I think the name is pretty cool and we as pros might have different POV on it because we link it to the training site. Also I don't think you should omit "Poker" at the end as I believe it is part of the name and make it sound much more reasonable :
"Run It Once" = training site
"Run It Once Poker" = poker site.

That is interesting. 100% they have an opinion on this if it takes off.

Full Tilt is a great name. Run It Once sounds like the anti marathon club. Ironically most people who will play on Run It Once probably don't do much running, well, maybe once.

Run It Once is established brand and that have some value.
If it is enoght to keep it as name for poker room is another question.

Obviously if Phil wanted he was able buy domains and everything else for more generic poker name like royalpoker, ggpoker, 777poker, renopoker ect.
He should at minimum protect his brand and buy riopoker.com from hugedomains.com for 3k as fast as possible (if Doug "domainer" Polk don't do it first) what he have not done yet even if he plans to use runitonce.eu as main domain what is questionable in itself. All runitoncepoker.com and Doug BS is absurd also (Note domain still redirect to non existing twitter post).
For person who seem wants build poker room around his brand he seem to have no idea about even buying most relevent domains.

The name may be important (I think RIO poker, at least as an acronym, sounds very good maybe because I speak portuguese and spanish), but the url is a false question. No one types adresses, what is most important is how high it reaches search engine results and the ads that appear on social media after you search something related or follow some personality.

Of course if a similar adress is toxic with some marketing crap, it may hurt RIO but other than that I don't see any problem unless those adresses reach a higher result in google or have links in more places, which I find almost impossible to happen.

Phil seem intrested to establish his "Run it Once" brand way more now (By starting poker room) what seem overall fine.

However there is huge difference between going from poker training site into poker room.
1)Poker training site is targeted to (regulars/people who looking for good poker strategy) what is way more niche market, way harder to enter (You actually need team/yourself to be good at poker) and you can get away not protecting your brand that much as it super hard to gain anything from similar domain abuse (As if player not find training site he retry search ect.).
2)Poker room is targeting basicaly everyone who want gamble. It can be way more dangerous to leave domains what can be abused out there, competition is way bigger and abuse way more common.
While direct address entry is not much, loosing theses few custumer potentially forver can be way more constly then buying out the gate every single domain you can find what can be abused (10$/peace for 99% domains and then few premium ones). Google specifically can show in some regions/languages/persons/specific search terms totally different domain on top (Especially when poker room is new!!!) with some SEO/good keyword usage. (It don't need to be #1 on "Run It Once Poker" or "Rio poker" to make damage).
Also if some % of users who use different search engine get targeted by wrong "right looking" domain can be dangerous. (For example duckduckgo gaining popularity because google privacy conserns and can be way bigger search engine 5 years down road).

Example: naturaleight.com abusing natural8.com right now and can cost lifelong players who never finds actual natural8 because they think they are on right page. (While google correct issue, different search engines with search term "naturaleight" might not do it).
Example: Pokerstars (Rational Intellectual Holdings) own publicly 1400+ domains what protect it brand (Some might be for new projects or something also).

Even domain simple as runitoncebonus.com/riobonus.com can gain lot traffic from term "run it once poker bonus" ect. can be simply abused and might cost (If even tiny % lost traffic) this huge project (probably costing 100k-500k+ $) way way more then just 5-8$/year for regfree domains (99% of them) or premium price (Small cost for preject costing 6+ digits) for domains what can be abused massively like riopoker.com.

We can retreve some information from domains registered by RIO/indication that registered by RIO:

runitonce.ca (Canada) owned by rio (Dan Quinn, Run It Once staff)
runitonce.es (Spain) owned by rio (Dan Quinn, Run It Once staff)
runitonce.fr (France) owned by rio (Pedro Gomez, Run It Once)
runitonce.de (Germany) on website saying "sold".(Private registration)
runitonce.it (Italy) Exactly same "sold" page (Private registration)

Spain/France domains suggest potentially RIO expecting to being able get FR/ES market same as stars is already doing it.
Specific names Dan Quinn and Pedro Gomez for domain registration suggest they are connected with RunItOnce Poker project decent amount.

runitonce.in (Not registered) Suggesting not planning any India market.

Domains below is with private registration but uses same small registar "Tucows Domains" what runitonce.com uses and likely is not consequence:

Runitonce.tv
Runitonce.live

I guess it might be something like pokerstars.tv but with also streams or something.

+Few standard ones what don't suggest much.

You make some very valid points that I didn't thought of. People with more experience in this stuff may work on RunItOnce, since they are webdesigners, they have all the information about this.

I still think it will have a marginal if any effect on the brand. Meaning they (RunItOnce) don't lose much business but some people may gain some money buying domains they wouldn't otherwise.

runitonce.se (sweden) is the same as runitonce.de and runitonce.it which suggest that they will in the future apply for swedish license as well (required from 1st january 2019).

runitonce.gr (greece) is another one what have same landing page and is another country what have plans licensing online gambling.
.kr (Korea), .ru (Russia) i guess will be just different language pages for countries what is in grey area.
.co.uk (UK), .be (Belgium), .bg (Bulgaria) is countries what is segregated by stars or different rooms with different rakeback deals/licences ect. already.

Theses domains is registered somewhat privately but it likely that RIO is owner of them.

I wouldn't read into the domain registrations much. It is so cheap and easy to register domains that most companies will buy up anything that they perceive even remotely useful some point in the future and/or just to protect their brands.

They will launch in the UK (that's already known and they have a license), almost certainly not in Belgium (v hard to get a license, expensive, small market), Bulgaria probably not worth it initially (tho it is on dot-com). Greece is also a small market with very weird tax rules (google "pokerstars tax deferral tournaments greece"), PokerStars is the only operator to work with local regulators. Czech Republic has similarly byzantine regulations and high taxes, so is pretty unappealing.

They will naturally launch in Germany, Russia, Canada, Norway, South America etc, under their Maltese license. Netherlands they will launch in, as regulations are still quite far away, though not under NL domain name or in Dutch language and without any marketing (if they have any sense - regulator looks poorly on such practice).

In terms of local licenses, beyond UK the next up is usually Denmark, as that has fairly reasonable regulations and is a rich market. Then maybe Romania, then Bulgaria.

When Sweden happens (2019) i expect it to be almost as popular as UK licensing, given market size an apparent ease of entry. If/when Netherlands happens, that's also going to be an important market and should be dot-com liquidity.

For EU shared liquidity, its all or nothing - either they launch in Spain+France (+Italy if that happens), or they do not at all. It's a big investment to launch in this market so I wouldn't expect it any time soon.

I agree that it all speculation at this point. Just indicating that they might be looking into some markets more then others (More then theses where they did not even bother to get domain like .cz/.in/.ee ect.)
For sure domain registration at this point in project don't indicate that they will get license or even try to get it.

Q1 2019?

Would be surprised if the Rio has any kind of trademarks or copyrights on the use of RIO for poker.

All they are is a host venue for the World Series, that's literally the only link. There's hundreds of events that go on there every year and I don't think they could trademark anything 'rio' related in anything else.

Even if they did, all they'd have to do is have it written as R.I.O or something...

I hope you'll tune into my O.L.Y.M.P.I.C games next summer

couldnt watch it all but 4 table cap would be much better than 6

Three tables per two limits (per limit) isn't too bad compared to eight tables per two limits. If it is six tables per limit and form, it is not limiting much anything. Watching the play, I find four tables too many.

I'm starting to think RIO could really work out. I've been playing online poker for about 14 years, and almost every problem a site has had has been from some combination of greed, negligence, and poker not being a priority in the larger company.

My feeling is that they are really trying to build something sustainable, and if anyone can do its a group of people who are smart, thoughtful, and extremely knowledgeable about poker.